Jewelweed
by Spylace
Summary: AU. The players are different though the story remains the same; priestesses are not meant for love, and half-demons are still the bane of their own existence. Demons continue to fall prey to their own whims and teenagers are prone to different kinds of trouble altogether.


**Title:** Jewelweed  
**Summary: **The players are different though the story remains the same; priestesses are not meant for love, and half-demons are still the bane of their own existence. Demons continue to fall prey to their own whims and teenagers are prone to different kinds of trouble altogether.  
**Rating: **PG13  
**Pairing:** None, light Kagome/Miroku  
**Notes: **the basic premise is that save for few, everyone's role has been switched around. Now Sango is the half-breed (cat demon/human), Kikyo the demon slayer, Souta in place of Kaede, Kagura instead of Naraku, and Miroku and Miyatsu ("Shippo") as the daiyoukai.  
**Disclaimer: **I do not own Inuyasha  
**Warnings:** Nothing comes to mind.  
**Word count: **5500+

.

They are born on a moonless night when the clouds curl covetously around the empty space as though it longs to swallow it whole. Miroku comes first then his brother Miyatsu at dawn, as glorious and golden as the waking sun. They are two brothers, inseparable, like-minded, and mischief-prone, each other's champions through lesson plans or simple pranks gone awry.

They have just sprouted their third tail when an attendant at their court gives birth to a filthy hanyo in the colors and stripes of a skulking cat. Miyatsu's immediate reaction is to draw his claws, venom seeping poisonous green through the air and the skin that had been a gift from their father to their mother on their marriage bed.

Miroku takes the blow to his chest and shields the squalling hanyo with his body. His blood baptizes the babe and soothes her when a few drops land in her budding mouth.

He runs and Miyatsu lets him.

Youkai live a long time. They will see each other again. But he is wrong.

.

There are fundamental truths about the world they live in even Miroku with his vagrant lifestyle, dubious choice of a companion and curious dietary requirements must abide by.

One is that hanyo are despised and hunted, their chimeric shapes of human and animal repulsive to even the kindliest monks. They must move on even as the girl protests, threatening to cut off her two-striped ears if it would allow her to stay at a village much longer, to pretend that the sight of blood welling up in a boy's scrapped knees does not make her hunger like the panicked flocks of chicken or the yellowed-ivory rib of a boar.

They wander far and wide, across the sloping back of the Western Plains he would have inherited in time had he turned his eyes away from the murder of a newborn. Sometimes the sunsets are too red for his eyes, lurid and bright like the rich afterbirth or the melted flesh from where Miyatsu had struck his claws. It doesn't seem so long ago that they slept together, dense belly fur meshing until it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. Though he is dark and his brother gold, they were very much the same on the shadowed nights in which they were born, their fur dark and black as pitch in the den they shared and the air they breathed against one another.

The girl tries, in her own manner, and he encourages her, heartened to see something good and pure come out from the bloody affair. Thanks to her demonic blood, the hanyo will live longer than an ordinary human. But he also knows that she will die long before he does, when most great-grandchildren saw their first sons grown.

The thought is strangely disheartening for all that he had always been a selfish creature, never caring for others and delighted in planting the faded silver in his mother's face. The only one he had ever loved had been his brother but he is beginning to find that his momentary pity, altruism that never was, stirs his heart in a way Miyatsu never had, because the hanyo is so helpless and small, just like a human girl her mother was had it not been for the pointed ears and the parallel lines across her cheekbones.

He thinks of her as his pup; ink across a blank page, content where there was none before. This is where he makes his second mistake.

.

At the edge of their territory there are series of villages, demon hunters and priests who form the first line of defense against the opposing factions in their delicate war. Miroku has already turned away several enterprising young cubs, his claws lacking Miyatsu's potent venom but wreathed in blue flames that burn just as badly. Grateful for his help, a benevolent guardian who only wishes to protect the shame that was her mother's daughter, the village pays tribute through a pair of sisters too extraordinary to be real.

The first time he sees Kagome, he cannot help but lean into her scent of lye-soap and crushed flowers, earning his ward's scorn as she turns her head in embarrassment and snaps at him to close his jaws before he swallows a bug. Miroku pouts for a full minute, his slit pupils rounded in amusement and surprise, like the sensation of finding early apples before birds picked them off the branches.

The other, he thought as he accepted the gifts of food and quality cloth, made a good playmate for the cat-hanyo, young enough that common prejudices had yet to become fully entrenched. They ran giggling past the tall reeds just as the sky opened up in a wet cloud burst, soaking them all to their skin. Being the gentleman that he was, he accompanied the two human girls back to their village, his three tails swaying openly in the cool breeze.

If Sango ever disagreed with his choices, she didn't say. But she was her mother's daughter and preferred the company of humans even when there were demons that could be tamed and coaxed, tricked into her lap like fish from a pond. At any rate, it didn't matter. They were happy and for him, that was enough.

.

Kagome is different. Least of all because she was a miko while he the youkai every mother warned their maiden daughters of.

It should have repelled her, her purity, her joyful gaze. But he often stood in the shade of a tree, like a suitor after his beloved's hand, simply observing, waiting to collect his ward as she went about her duties, renewing protective seals and purifying the disgusting burden she called the Shikon Jewel.

Often, as he passed the tiny shrine it was housed in, on his way from the forest to the village, he would shudder in its presence and the cloying aura, torn between swallowing it whole and burning it in his blue flames.

To distract himself, he starts with flirting with all the village women both married and unmarried, flattering an old widow enough to be asked to the spring festival. But his eyes are always on Kagome in red and white, like the needle on a compass pointing true north or the return of a passerine to its favored grounds after spending the winter away.

They kiss on the night of the summer solstice when Kagome turns twenty-three, unmarried, unmarriageable, a virgin bride for his very own. Kagome was never the type to swoon, preferring to redirect his misbehavior in colorful ways. But she sighs in resignation, a smile gracing her lips, and murmurs her secrets in his ear, tying a string of blue pearls around his wrist.

.

Later, he learns that Kagura was born a maiden who had suffered an untimely death, brokenhearted from giving her love away to one who did not deserve. In death, she became a vengeful demon, feeding on the souls of young girls in the first blush of their youth, their salty blood wetting her lips and seeping through the massive fissures in her own.

But to him, Kagura is an unwanted interloper in the idle sphere he has created for himself, a spot of dark cloud in an otherwise beautiful sky. One night, injured and dying from an encounter with slayers who had set an ambush, she made her way to the outskirts of his village, hiding among the frightened goats and the heads of cattle, the last place anyone would have thought to look.

Though utterly repulsed by the holy energy that surrounded the area, she took shelter in a small, rocky alcove after she bled a stray dog, shivering as her wound knitted and the sudden spike in youki giving away her location.

But it wasn't death that greeted her after as a miko followed her youkai companion, giving her a glimpse of hope and what would be her deliverance. Kagome's heart, she would have devoured greedily had she been able, despite Miroku's presence, having never known the utter hatred another could generate within her save for the boy whom she had given herself.

Too kindhearted and tender, instead of killing her, the miko sets down her bow and arrow and wipes away her blood. Even little Sango, a little girl who came just above their knees, had taken one whiff of her and fled, her ears pressed flat against her skull as she spat out chestnuts and flickers of flame.

Distressed at the graceful hands marred with splatters of gore-slick blood, he presses her with a polite smile and crouches beside her, economic in his movements as he does what she tells him to, loathing to touch her or even be near her but unable to allow Kagome to continue. The other youkai stares up at him in anger, spitting poison from her crimson eyes.

It was a pity. In truth, he probably looked nothing like the lover who had abandoned her shamed and humiliated. But Kagome was a girl in love and that was enough to cause her to seethe and reproach his advances as he took over her ministrations, eyes midnight dark as blue flames danced over their heads.

.

Jealous and enraged at the miko's tender caresses, at him and the unwanted pity, Kagura makes an unholy pact with all those who wanted the woman dead, wanted her power as their own. In exchange for her broken body, she receives far more power than she has ever known.

It drives her mad.

.

Miroku could not have said what had awakened him, lying across a moonlit rooftop with the orphaned hanyo tucked by his side, her face tickled by the weaves of straw. His three tails coil around him, tense as a spring, an itch near the base of his spine not unlike the birth of a fourth tail. But it is decades before he can be considered a yonbi, powerful enough perhaps that he could entertain carving out a territory of his very own straddling the East and the West, perhaps North as the fiery Kokuo had passed sometime before and no suitable replacement had turned up since.

His mother, no doubt, would be suspicious enough to be plotting his speedy and discreet removal from the playing field. She would have gotten along well with Kagura, spiteful harpies the both of them though he demurred from using such harsh words against the fairer sex. Kagome was quite talented, kind, and wise and everything the female figures in his life hadn't been. He would have his wish soon and Kagome with it long before the season ended and the moon swelled once more heavy with promise.

He stands up.

It is a warm night, too warm it seems for his Sango to sleep comfortably inside. Her banded ears flickered at his sudden motion, a quiet rising from her lips as his tail slid smoothly from her grasp.

"Hush" He whispers, soothing her waking movements. At his voice, she calms and slipped deeper into sleep. He unties his sash from his shoulders and throws it over her, striking a single character in the air with the tip of his claws.

There is no visible impact from his spell-casting and the charm itself would unravel come morning when the sun beat down on the violet fabric. Pleased, Miroku stretches, his back popping unflatteringly. "Ah I feel so out of shape." He says to no one in particular as he turns towards the rocky hills where he had felt the surge of youki. Within a blink of an eye, he is gone. It is as though he was never there.

.

Miroku reaches the cave entrance and recoils at the stink of flames and burnt flesh. His hair rises on end, fangs gleaming as his head assumed its true form before turning back. He takes several steps backwards, his tail glowing an eerie blue at the ends.

His first thought, raw and instinctive is—_how dare she? _

The earth has been defiled, poisoned and barren beneath his heels. He struggles to reclaim his calm. He is not the same fox who had been chased out of his family stronghold, the one who struggled to provide for himself and the helpless babe under the callous gaze of others who would have just as eagerly killed them both for wanting to live.

Miroku can no longer act out of instinct, orders and the simple need to protect. Actions had consequences and he has others he must take care of now, he is one no longer but of many and he needs to figure out what is happening.

Unconsciously, his tails lash out, churning up the earth and cutting into stone. Kagura had been there and despite the stink of foreign youkai, there is no evidence of her struggle, the hollow echoes of her screams or even her death. The mountain holds secrets it cannot readily tell, secrets hidden from him, covered by the pool of blackened blood and burnt dirt.

Shyly, he inches close, as though placating a panicking animal or plucking an unwary squirrel from the trees. His claws twitch wanting to bury the evidence, pretend that it never happened. But there, deep in the pockets of stagnant air, he could smell traces of Kagura, faint but unmistakably her.

This is no scent of fear, terror, vomiting and bile, only the obscenest kind of joy, something familiar to him like the wicked glimpse of his mother's teeth or the sharpness in her eyes whenever he tired of her games and killed his victims.

Kagome would want to see this, want to see the evidence of her patient's last resting place. She was like that, always wanting to help, always wanting to save that one last person.

There is no doubt that Kagura is gone but there is no death scent. So which is it? Was Kagura dead or was she not? He doesn't understand. He sneezes and realizes at the same time that the air is toxic even to him who had been trained in the darkest arts their kind could manage. His middle tail flares to life in a shock of violent blue flames edged with white, lighting up the night's air and drawing all its poisons to the flickering depths.

Yes, Kagome would want to see this. He could not allow it.

_Miyatsu are you watching?_—he wonders and sets fire to the hills.

He stands there for a long time.

.

Uneasiness claims them after, the certainty of wrongness that dogged their every footstep. Disturbed, Miroku spends most nights awake and reading what nary wisdom the stars have to offer, naming them one by one to have their stories told while Kagome, and sometimes Souta, counter with tales of their own.

There is an eerie sound, devoid of any inflection or sound, ringing in his ears. Or perhaps it is the absence of sound for someone who has learned to process even the most inconsequential of noises. The crickets are quiet tonight and he wants to find out why.

Miyatsu doesn't come for him.

He tries hard to pretend he isn't hurt.

.

Something in the wind has changed. Even Sango stays up with him to keep watch, her gilded ears keen in the night, picking out the sound of a mouse's feet scratching in the underbrush when he is distracted with an owl's hoots, bloated and distracting, as though it is counting off the hours until the main event.

Kagome's presence helps, during the day when he accompanies her in search of useful herbs and tree roots before the winter sets in, the daylight diminishing with the color of leaves, bright yellows and reds Sango gathers in armfuls to build her nest.

He smiles at her fondly, tickled at her innovation. She reminds him of Miyatsu sometimes for all that he was a fox grown, acting like a child spoiled on indulgence.

Miroku thinks that he is waiting. The Shikon Jewel is almost complete.

.

"Miyatsu"

"Excuse me?"

Indulgent, Miroku repeats "Miyatsu, for our firstborn if it's a boy."

Kagome puts her hand on her lips, her basket balanced in her arms as she raises an arched eyebrow.

"You may name the girl." He offers magnanimously and she laughs, tossing her dark-colored mane in the wind.

"Behave" She says with a stern face though her body remains loose and inviting, temptation poured into a woman's form. He slips behind her and rests his chin against her shoulder, nice and easy, eyes downcast and fluttering as though in a dream.

"But I've been good haven't I?" He murmurs, nibbling around the soft whorls of her ear. "I deserve a reward."

.

This is the last of the happy memories

.

He sees her and laughs, choked hysteria caught high in his throat. Downwind, she thought she had the advantage with the sun to her back and blinding, causing his eyes to tear in disbelief as he cuts the arrowhead from his sleeve, his jaws jutting out as he slides into his fox form.

He is a youkai, a daiyoukai, a scion of the great fox lords who ruled the Western Lands. His kind wrote the scrolls on illusions and transformation, the petty guise the other demon wears, of Kagome, crude and misshapen from approximation, does not fool him anymore than a tiger paraded as a calf, or a child feigning sickness to get out of school.

Immediately, she flees from him, revealing a furious composite of body parts even he can't help but balk at as he runs through the trees. But she isn't his target and he doesn't give a chase. He has been such a fool.

.

The Shikon Jewel was meant to be their hope and salvation but ultimately spells their downfall.

When he appears in the middle of the village, he is mobbed by villagers, humans, panicked from the errant screams piercing through the woods. They demand answers of him, time that he does not have. He snags Souta from the crowd floundering in his grip, arms pinwheeling as his eyes grow distressingly wide. Sango grabs his arm, small and scared, her ears gone, markings, the clawtips and the unique scent of feline-youkai-human disappeared as though it never was.

"Where is she?"

Thankfully, the boy immediately grasps the crux of his questioning.

"I thought she was with you!"

"She's not." He breathes, anger simmering just beneath the surface as electricity snaps in his eyes. "She's in danger."

"She went in the forest." A grey-haired matron says fitfully. "Sachiko-san took ill this morning and used up her stock of bloodwort. Kagome wanted to see if she could find more."

"At this time of the year?" He asks incredulous as he tracks the sun across the autumn sky. But he can easily imagine her doing such a foolish thing, venturing out into the woods just before nightfall knowing that the last of the bloodwort had been harvested by early summer. Normally, there is nothing in the forest that can harm her. If anything got past her arrows, they would stop at his scent, heavily entwined with hers, marking Kagome as in keeping of the fox lords of the Western Lands.

But Kagura hides among the trees and she does not care. He needs to find Kagome right now but he cannot leave without the Shikon Jewel in his pockets.

If he has time, he thinks past the shouts of alarm when he bursts through the straw-thatched rooftops, the pink-lit luster of the Shikon Jewel dangling from one sleeve, he will burn it and make sure it will never return. He would splinter it into pieces like a hammerblow on a walnut shell and make sure it stays dead.

_You poisonous thing_ he swears, half admiring.

He needs to find Kagome, he doesn't know where she is.

.

She finds him. Of course she does, the one person who knew him better than his own twin.

All the times they spent in each other's company, loving each other, getting to know one another and he thought he had the advantage of superior senses. But she knows his heart and finds it unerringly through the pattern of leaves. He barely feels it when the iron-cast arrowhead pierces his heart and comes out the other end, pinning him to a giant oak from he struggles for a moment before laying still.

He had been looking for her, hoping that she was simply picking through the forest floor, harvesting that one last mushroom or the blade of grass she could dry before the wild boars found them with their sharper senses. Belatedly, the sharp twang of her bow resonates through his ears prompting him to drop the Shikon Jewel at his feet.

At once, Kagome looks devastated, her eyes so pained that it hurt to even look. She emerges from the shadows, blood blotting her right shoulder and dripping down one arm. He cries in anguish at her appearance—there is so much blood.

"Lady Kagome—"

"Don't"

Hand trembling, she picks up the Shikon Jewel and holds it close to her heart. He wants to demand that she look at him, how could she even think that he betrayed her and suddenly knows with certainty what she knows, she knew this would happen.

His tails spread out like a velvet cloak over the forest floor. Fire licks up their lengths, blue and bright like a beacon to lost souls. The fletching of the arrow catches on fire and burns to the middle where it breaks off, leaving a blackened stump inside his chest.

"Why?" He chokes as his strength fails, vision blurring as he gives up with a one last tug.

"I'm sorry." Kagome replies and he doesn't want to hear it, wants to shut his ears out against the world. For her to be saying those two words means that she knows and has given up against the insurmountable odds. Worse yet it means they she loves him as he loves her.

There are words that are unsaid between them, words that they must say but choose not to out loud. "You must burn my body with it, Miroku, please, you must."

He closes his eyes.

"I'll try."

.

He dreams.

In his sleep, he replays that moment when Kagome dashed their future against the rock like an infant with his skull cracked or eggs dropped from the lush canopy. Sometimes, he sees the tributes of minor demons, the family of tanuki he helped one winter or a hawk who tilts his wings briefly in thanks before flying away.

He sees Sango half-grown, fully-grown as though seen through a series of portraits lining the hallway. He sees Souta who takes the time, despite his blind eye, to make the pilgrimage to honor his sister and the demon that could have been his brother. He doesn't think he wants to know what the villagers think of him when they burn incense beneath the branches, muttering blessings and curses in a span of a breath, men sobbing like babes for their mother at the loss of their beloved miko.

But he is glad that they do not blame Sango for what has happened. Within the confines of his dream, his Sango is happy; she seems so very much alive.

.

New moons are always difficult and Sango prefers to spend it with him at the foot of his tree, twisting her coat and blankets around her blunted nails as she chews on rice or a piece of dried fruit. By daybreak, there are always tears streaking down her tears, tears he longs to wipe away.

He wonders, not for the first time, if she ever cried when she was with him and berates himself for wondering, for not knowing.

It is hard, caring for others.

.

Kagome returns though not as she was, wearing another form, a different one, two halves of a powerful whole, sometimes a girl as dark as the empty space between the stars. Other times, a boy with hair like new snow. They are like jagged satelites revolving around a strange moon, pieces of what was one great with promises to be together some day.

They are born, grown, living their separate lives through a span of millennia and the next.

If this is a dream, it is a strange one, a pleasant one.

If this is death, he doesn't think he minds.

.

Fifty years later, he wakes up to a lover's face, a stranger's face and wants to die.

The fire doesn't kill him though its effects linger, having burned through most of his right side and melted the arrow inside his heart.

Sango tears into him, her luminous brown eyes filled with betrayal. He has no explanations, cannot give any without sounding like a coward. His hands shake when he stands, his bed of oak the poison that fed his body as he slept, living the past century through dreams too extraordinary to be anything but real.

Kagome is dead, her reincarnations fragile and weak compared with her.

Kikyo, the female half, the slayer who has not an ounce of spiritual talent Kagome once held but all of her fierceness, the bold need to protect and defend the weak, burns radiantly within her like the dog star which hunts through the night's sky.

She reminds him that this is the world Kagome died for, a world now controlled by Kagura and her filthy get, gnawing at the barriers of their world like a child eager to be born. He chuckles and tells her that he knew a girl like her once, who died doing the hard thing, the right thing, returned because the world couldn't let go.

But he smiles at her, for her, because his youkai nature is a curse too difficult to overcome. He would have done better to be born a flower or a mushroom, easily trampled and cut and still he would have been content. Happier than what he is right now, a demon who has lost his mate.

.

"You are ill." Sango despairs when she finds him collapsed beneath a tree after an encounter against Kagura's numerous offspring, a wheezy sort of pant trickling from his lips. It had been a hard fight, liberating when fur sprouted over his human hide as he multiplied in size, towering over them all as Goshiki gored his belly with his horn.

He feels as blind and helpless as a cub, a liability and a burden for the entire searching for a way to slay Kagura, to make the Shikon Jewel whole. Miroku has warned them of this but they will not listen, too enchanted by the potential within the individual shards, how they glow when they are near the boy Yashamaru and fade when far.

When Sango pierces his skin with a pearly shard, he screams in rage and pushes away from her, scraggly black fur enveloping his skin, one tail furling into two, three, then four like desiccated ivy limp and drooping as they drag on the ground, carving deep grooves in the earth as he tries to get away.

He feels sick, violated and worn.

And he realizes that he hasn't failed yet.

His death is merely long time in coming.

.

Their travels see him better, sometimes worse, never fully recovered as he flirts with girls he wouldn't have looked at twice when Kagome was alive, reveres Kikyo and protects Inuyasha from harm. He tells Sango how proud he is of her, reminding her of a time when her future had been uncertain, when he thought it perhaps a mercy to let her go.

They endear himself to him one by one though they can never be enough to tether him to a world where his beloved is gone, scattered into pieces in the hearts of men and women he hasn't the courage to seduce, knowing that he is marked and dying, martyred for this one final cause.

Shikon Jewel was never meant for the likes of them and perhaps he should have listened to his instincts, the lessons of thousand hours his mother invested into him, the fine intuition that told him once that the pearl was a thing poisoned and Kagome's presence wasn't purifying it as much as it was killing it. It wanted Kagome dead and Sango wants a part of it, wanting so much more when she is more than he could have dreamed for her.

The Shikon Jewel knows his hatred intimately and tries to tempt him for all that Kagome parting smile has given him the power to repel its advances.

.

Miroku sees his brother once before his death, when they press into the heart of the Western Lands and the virulent infestation Kagura has wrought, spreading her roots deep into the earth. If the fox lords know if this, if his mother know of it, he doesn't know. He thinks that she might have even sanctioned it on whim, underestimating just how far the shadows encroached upon their territory, thinking Kagura a clever but a harmless little thing, a shiny bauble in the grass, a fleeting entertainment in the monotony of their lavish lives.

Kagura, when dug up, writhes in his mouth, a mass of tentacles filled with rotted ink, half a Shikon Jewel in the place of her heart as Kikyo takes her head clean off using her bone boomerang. Sango brings Yashamaru on her back, wrinkling her nose when the demoness' body bursts into a sack of pus and fluids down the front of his chest. The boy blanches visibly at the sight but recovers, stabbing at her face with the sword in his hand.

The body redoubles its efforts to recover her head, solidifying into jelly-like consistency as it splits into nine parts, covering his face and flooding his lungs, toppling him as his eyes bug out from the lack of oxygen.

Yellow fire dances across his vision when his muzzle is clawed open, his eye bleeding but his airways finally free. He chokes and hacks up what remains inside his body, blue sparks crawling down his ribs and mangy fur, ears pressed backwards in shame.

Miyatsu after fifty years is beautiful, his coat luxurious and golden, the four tails lit with brilliance he would never again encounter in his lifetime. _You were right_, he murmurs to him, _loving is a hard life_.

_Of course I was_—his brother says haughtily before licking his face, not an apology, never an apology but a promise, of comfort, warmth and safety. _I forgive you. Let's be brothers again. _

Never had he been more tempted to say yes.

He is thrown clear, the earth upturned from his feet when he catches Kagura's skull and crushes beneath his claws. Miroku hits the dirt, cracking his head against rocks as stars burst behind his eyes, blinding with their sheer numbers and brilliance when he unloosens his eyelids enough to look. His back is broken and his arm is flayed, he hears Sango crying out for help. She is very far away.

He is like a human unborn, tiny and frail, cradled between Miyatsu's soft paws. Miroku turns to him, choking on blood as his ribs give away with a dull snap.

This is mercy.

"Shippou" He breathes, raising his face in welcome.

The fox lord cocks his head and gently bites his brother in two.

_Epilogue_

"Is this him? He looks... slimy."

"Yasha" Kikyo rebukes though her eyes remain suspiciously wet and admiring, tracking the tiny fists as they drag up and down his cheeks. The top of his head is still tacky with the afterbirth, the curls of his hair dark already across his bare scalp. He is at once the most wonderful and amazing thing they have ever seen in their lives. He also has a tail, a small one and barely long enough to brush against his thighs. "Is this him?"

"Yes" Sango sighs, in relief as she is led to a small wicker chair, a mug pressed into her hands and the baby rescued from her arms. Her breasts still tingle, missing the solid weight of the youkai cub, but it is for the best, any longer and she was afraid she would drop him. "I took him as quickly as I could. Ayeka was displeased to say the least."

Kikyo rocks the baby gently as though to sooth him as Sango answers Yashamaru's startled look.

"The baby wasn't born golden. To foxes, that is bad luck."

"Miroku's fox was black." The human teenager points out.

"And he was raised to be a shadow," the hanyo explains warily, already nodding off. "The vassal of Lord Miyatsu."

The boy shakes his head. "I still can't believe that they're related."

"You did not know Miroku before. He was young once. The death of Kagome aged him greatly."

"So why send his kid to us?"

"For safekeeping" Sango drains her mug before reclaiming the child, tucking the furs around his tiny face and smiling when a fist unfurls into the shape of pink sea-stars, delicate and waving as though caught in an ocean current. "Honor, redemption, because even Miyatsu cannot unlearn his brother's death, what it meant for them both."

"What did it mean?" Inuyasha asks in a hushed voice, almost reverent as he gazes upon the baby's face, the flutter of his pouting lips and the magnificent violet of his eyes.

"Love" Kikyo speaks up, draping a blanket over Sango's proud shoulders. "That love is the most precious gift of all."


End file.
